If it’s 16 August, it’s the 363rd anniversary of William Harrison’s disappearance from Chipping Campden, which led to the hanging of three people for his murder, one of whom was still dangling in a gibbet when William strolled back into town two years later. Yes, it’s time for
William was 70, and collected rents for Lady Campden, owner of The Big House (which had burnt down during the Civil War). He set out collecting that day, but hadn’t come home by nightfall, so his wife sent faithful servant John Perry out to look.
With no sign of either man by morning, Harrison’s son Edward set out and met Perry coming back on his own. When a poor woman looking for spilt grain in a field found a hat, comb and bloodied neck-band belonging to William, locals decided Perry had done him in.
He was questioned by a Justice of the Peace, and produced a story of such unlikely detail that it must surely be true. He had set out, met someone called Will Reed, and told Will he was going back to get a horse, because he didn’t like the dark. Reed went on his way, but Perry stayed where he was, and didn’t get a horse. Linda Stratmann recounts the rest of the events in her book, Gloucestershire Murders:
A man called Pearce next happened by and Perry walked with him into the fields for a ‘bow’s shot’ (about 200 yards) before returning with him to his master’s gate, where they parted. By now, Perry’s wanderings back and forth and standing around had occupied two hours, during which Mrs Harrison no doubt thought he was searching for her husband. Perry then went into his master’s hen-roost and lay there for an hour, without sleeping. When the church clock struck midnight he got up and went towards Charringworth. Then, he said, a great mist arose and he lost his way, so he spent the rest of the night lying under a hedge. At daybreak he continued his journey to Charringworth, where he spoke to Edward Plaisterer and William Curtis. By now it was 5 a.m., and the sun was rising, so Perry set out for home, meeting up with Edward Harrison on the way.
His four witnesses corroborated their parts of the story, but the magistrate kept him in custody until he could investigate further.
When he came back the next week, Perry repeated his story. And then started talking complete bollocks.
Another week later, the magistrate was back, by which time Perry was “at last willing to tell the truth”: his mother, Joan, and brother, Richard, he said, had frequently pestered Perry to tell them where Harrison went to collect rent. He had finally given in, and later:
found his master lying on the ground, Richard standing over him and their mother standing nearby. ‘Ah, rogues, will you kill me?’ Harrison had exclaimed. John told his brother that he hoped he would not kill his master, but Richard said, ‘Peace, peace, you’re a fool’, and strangled Harrison. He then took a bag of money from Harrison’s pocket and threw it into his mother’s lap. John and Richard carried the body from the Conygree to the adjoining garden, where they discussed what to do with it. They decided to throw it into the ‘great sink’ (probably a cesspool) by Wallington’s Mill behind the garden.
Why had he suddenly told this story? If one of the possible explanations — that John Perry wanted to get rid of his brother and mother — is true, he was, unfortunately, an idiot, and had just made himself an accessory after the fact. But more of possible explanations later.
The mother and brother were arrested, and said John was a villain for telling such lies. So John came up with some more (and later accused his mother and brother of trying to poison him).
The magistrate then asked about a burglary of Harrison’s house the previous year, and an attack on John Perry a few weeks ago. Ah, yes, said Perry — my brother did the burglary, and I made up the attack to put people off the scent.
Clearly a highly reliable witness.
All three were hanged. Joan went first because — well, obviously — she was a witch and had put a spell on her sons, preventing them from confessing. (John had confessed in a way, of course, but had said ‘it wasn’t me, guv’, and it was the 17th century, so: witch.)
Richard ascended the gallows begging John to tell the truth, so John turned to the crowd and said: “I know nothing of my master’s death, not what has become of him; but you may hereafter possibly hear”, which was frankly weird, and not much help to any of them.
As if this wasn’t all absurd enough already, when antiquarian Anthony à Wood wrote the story up, he said a gentlewoman later asked for Joan to be dug up so she could learn more about witchcraft. This was duly done, and:
Things didn’t get much more sensible when Harrison came back in early August 1662. What had become of him, everyone (somewhat understandably) wanted to know. Well…
In some versions of the story, they even stabbed him in the leg and side before they abducted him, making the idea of a septuagenarian being worth anything as a slave (even to an apparently 80-year-old doctor) yet more ridiculous.
So, the question we all want answering, obviously, is: what in the name of fuck? And many people have tried to come up with plausible theories. Harrison had been embezzling money, perhaps, and needed to disappear until Charles II came along and pardoned Civil War-era crimes?
Quite possible — and maybe Perry was in on it, and wanted to explain away Harrison’s disappearance and get rid of a mother and brother he clearly didn’t like much into the bargain. But why implicate himself? Well, maybe he wasn’t altogether balanced. Or was an idiot.
It may be that the royalist Campden family knew Harrison was off somewhere, and didn’t want to tell his apparently “snotty, covetous Presbyterian” wife for fear she would betray them — but by 1660, no one needed worry about Cromwell much.
There’s even a theory that it’s all to do with Harrison and Perry spiriting the Campdens’ wealth out of the ruined house through underground tunnels, with Joan Perry pretending to be a witch in the churchyard above to mask the noise of carts rumbling underneath.
The only thing we really know for sure is that the case led to the rather unhelpful legal convention ‘no body, no murder’, which allowed anyone who disposed of a body successfully to get away with it, and stuck until the 1930s.
